The Identity of the Voice
by Anamakorga
Summary: He doesn't know his name anymore, but he doesn't think there's anybody out there who really cares what his name is, so what does it matter? And then there's Carlos.


His job is to report the news.

That is all.

Does He even go home?

Sometimes, the answer is no.

Sometimes, His contract requires that the answer is no.

It is not as though He particularly cares.

Day after day after day after day .

There is nothing but news.

He is ready for the end of the news.

He has spent so long on the news.

He wishes He had never gotten involved in reporting the news.

He is not human, not anymore, and He knows it well.

He knows it too well for His own comfort.

He sees people live and die and He is ready for it to happen to Himself.

He has seen it all, and yet through the cloudy lenses of His cream-colored eyes He cannot see anything at all.

He doesn't experience.

He just stays at his desk and reports the news.

He is far too old.

He always looks young, so young, and He really doesn't have a choice in the matter.

Then there is someone else.

He catches it, through the pearly haze that His eyes present him through the weeks and months and years, decades, centuries, how many centuries-

He doesn't know what exactly it is about him.

Perhaps it is the way the sunlight shines off his loose curls.

That's probably it.

His omniscience – faulty, fallible, frustrating, and several words that don't start with 'F,' informs Him that his name is Carlos.

He is, very suddenly, ripped from His thoughtless weightless news.

News that means nothing to Him.

He has a title.

More than just a pronoun, He has a Title.

He doesn't think he's ever been this excited about anything before.

He's the Voice.

The Voice of Night Vale.

It's simple, and he can shorten it to just the Voice, and he likes it.

For the first time in a long time, he-

With a lowercase h, with a lowercase h, he hasn't been this excited about anything in a long time-

Leaves the station.

He- the Voice, flinches at the sunlight he hasn't seen for himself in longer than he cares to know.

He goes to the town meeting.

He sees people, and he knows them.

Not just from the news, though some are on the news.

But some aren't!

That's- the Voice searches around in his head for a word with bias and finally settles on Neat.

That's neat.

It's striking him how he can have his own opinions on things.

A lot of things are hitting him all at once, and he can't seem to breathe, but then he sees him.

Carlos.

Carlos is perfect and beautiful, and when the Voice looks at him his breath is taken away, but it's good now.

He's heard so much about love.

He didn't think it would ever be something that happened to him.

Not after what happened before.

The Voice isn't entirely sure what happened before, but he knows that something did, so he marks it off as unimportant and moves on.

"Hey." He says, and now that will always be the first word between them.

He could regret it.

He chooses, at this moment, not to.

"I'm the Voice of Night Vale,"

He doesn't have a name, or if he does, he doesn't know what it is.

"I'm on the community radio station during the evenings."

"My name is Carlos." Is the reply.

It doesn't even matter that the last name has been drowned out by the sudden roar of a dozen people suddenly discovering there is a spider in one corner of the room.

"I'm a scientist."

Carlos's voice is like the end of the rainbow.

Proud, pretty, and perfect.

Perfect.

Carlos is perfect.

The Voice has never been poetic before, but that is what he thinks, and he will continue to think it until time comes crashing down atop him in a fiery fury.

"You know, Night Vale is the most scientifically interesting community this half the country."

Carlos is bright, The Voice thinks, and it makes the rest of the room seem that much dimmer.

"Well, I have to go." Carlos says. "It was nice to meet you...,"

He waits for a name, and there is nothing the Voice wants more than to give him one, but he only just got a title.

"I'll, ah, be seeing you." He says, adjusting the lab coat that is just a tad too large around his shoulders and walking off before the Voice can respond.

In the evening, most of the Voice's report is on Carlos.

He starts with a notice from the City Council, then the not-angels.

He manages almost five minutes, then he is back to Carlos.

He can't help it.

The Voice's next report is the news again, just the news.

He can hardly make the words come out of his mouth through the cuts left by the chewed glass.

Because he's supposed to report the news.

But he thinks of Carlos, beautiful Carlos, and he makes it through the day.

He manages the next few months thinking of Carlos and the way he smells like hand sanitizer and lilac.

Makes it through the next few months knowing that Carlos needs to know the news.

He negotiates his contract for the first time in over a century.

The Voice ends up with a proper deal.

An apartment on the other side of town.

Sleep, rest, peace of mind.

Carlos gets his hair cut, and it is a proper blip in that peace of mind, but the Voice is decently alright.

He finds that Carlos' hair looks nice no matter how it is done.

It is yet another month before-

It is the 12th of August, and The Voice has a name.

Cecil.

There is no last name, and there will not be, not for a long while.

But it is now the 12th of August, and Cecil has a name.

He uses it.

He calls up everyone he knows and tells them his name.

They use it.

For them, the novelty of their Voice having a name wears off quickly, leaving him lacking, in want for another revelation.

One comes, in not more than two and a half weeks, not with someone who he loves, but whom he hates.

Steve Carlsberg.

The name leaves a bad taste in his mouth, like moulding mothballs.

Steve Carlsberg makes a comment on the drawbridge.

Who, in their right mind, gave Steve Carlsberg the authority to comment on the drawbridge?

Certainly not anyone who's seen his hubcaps.

Cecil may or may not go off topic, just a little, though luckily the bandages around his left arm can be covered up by long sleeves.

He's been on a sweater kick lately.

Things calm down, and Cecil can make his own comments on the news stories.

He writes an editorial.

He's never been more delighted to write an editorial.

It's nearly a quarter of a year before anything else really happens, but Cecil has bowling and Friday mornings in the Moonlite All-Nite Diner.

His sense of self does not slip.

Then Carlos calls Cecil.

Carlos calls Cecil.

Cecil feels, more than he probably should, more than he's allowed, and he can already feel the hateful tines of whatever Station Management will dig up for him next.

But there Carlos is, shiny and bright (metaphorically, though Carlos has started to glow slightly since last week).

He talks about the time, though, unfortunately, not the time that is that weekend or the plans that might have been made for the weekend.

There's a brightness to the world when Carlos talks.

An impossible, indescribable brightness.

The world is dark and meaningless.

And then there's Carlos.

And life progresses.

Whenever the pain of the ethereal spiders in his arms becomes bothersome enough that he cannot seem to continue talking, he thinks of the world and his life and Carlos and it seems that the world is just a little bit better again.

Cecil's wellbeing takes a drastic dip with the sandstorm.

He has a Dana, though he's not sure whether it is Dana, or if it's her double.

He has too many things to focus on, and he can't manage them all.

Then there's his own double.

He looks into his own eyes and sees nothing.

A kind of emptiness that says he has fallen, dreadfully, desperately, into the present moment and cannot look forward or back farther than he can throw his hideous being.

He knows, now, that he has a vague idea of what he looks like, but any details are lost on him.

He can tell differences, but not similarities.

He only knows what he does not look like.

Maybe he's awful.

Maybe everyone looks at him and feels the same way he felt when he looked at his double.

Maybe that's why Carlos doesn't like him.

He dwells in simmering anxiety for three weeks.

Everything seems awful.

He sticks to reporting the news.

Everything is fine, for a while.

But then Khoshekh has kittens.

How, he doesn't know, but Koshekh has kittens.

They float in the air around the men's bathroom, fantastically wonderful in every way.

Even as he knows that he'll be punished for talking so excitedly about them, the delight of the whole thing carries him through.

Even when they shove a struggling thing down his burning throat.

He manages to report the reappearance of mayor Pamela Winchell.

According to Dana, she's stepping down next year.

Then there's a quiet time when everything is just-

Fine.

It's fine.

Not great, but fine.

Cecil is shopping when it happens.

He's yanked, like a puppet, through space, and lands with a brain-shattering break in his recording booth.

He feels sickly and sticky, but he searches for whatever they want him to report on anyways.

The Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex is under attack.

The tiny civilisation beneath lane five has risen from their hideaway.

Carlos is there, as brave as he is beautiful.

Outside the Desert Flower, the Apache Tracker (just as racist as ever) waits.

It has been one whole year since Carlos arrived in Night Vale, and Cecil will die before he sees Carlos fall to the tiny people.

He had planned a celebration.

He is not upset.

He is not upset.

But then Carlos is back!

He says they have nothing to fear, and though it is Cecil's job to tell people things they do not know, hearing this makes him feel infinitely better.

Until.

Oh.

He feels, more than he ever has in the parts of his life he remembers.

Carlos is not fine.

Carlos is not safe.

He can't do anything.

He is stuck in the booth in his chair and he can do nothing to stop anything that is happening, though he has never wanted to before, and more than anything else, anything, anything else, he can do nothing.

He can do nothing.

**CARLOS IS DEAD. **

Sweet Carlos with his soft brown eyes and bright smile.

Cecil wishes someone, anyone, would do something, anything, because he cannot.

He is still holding the trophy.

But then the Apache Tracker, still very offensive, runs in, shouting he drags Carlos away from the citizens, and by some, unreasonable miracle, Teddy Williams indicates that Carlos is going to be okay.

Carlos is going to be okay!

Cecil's recently acquired phone lights up with a distinguishable buzz.

In less than twenty minutes, Cecil and Carlos sit on top of Carlos's sporty yet practical hybrid coupe.

He looks up at the lights above the Arby's, and then back at Carlos, and he remembers.

"Cecil Gershwin Palmer." He says.

"What?"

"That's my full name."

The sky is dark – mostly void, partially stars – but now, with their hands interlaced within each others', it seems bright.


End file.
